Many have dreamed of liv­ing the aquat­ic life, but no one has ever cap­tured it quite like Mor­gan Maassen has in his tru­ly epic short, Water. This film takes us across the brine divider that sep­a­rates us from the major­i­ty of earth. Once beneath the sur­face, we see the oth­er­world­ly beau­ty of waves explod­ing in thun­der­clouds. We see surfers launch them­selves like tor­pe­does upon the chaos. We see swim­mers fly under­wa­ter through the light-shift­ing liq­uid. And the result of it all is an aston­ish­ing per­spec­tive shift. For a moment, we have gills. For a moment, the lim­its of our known world no longer apply. It’s a weight­less, pow­er­ful, mas­ter­work that will stay in your mind each time you dive into the oth­er world. 

By Tim Gib­bins